


A Bright Nowhere

by corbaccio



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen or Pre-Slash, M/M, Pining, Stargazing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:35:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25289914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corbaccio/pseuds/corbaccio
Summary: Jean was silent for a moment, and then spoke with obvious awe: “Wow. I can’t remember the last time I saw so many stars.”Armin felt something warm settle in his chest. He knew, of course—he’d been watching this same sky for long enough—but still he lifted his gaze upwards, the glory of it filling him, charging him.(Written for Jearmin Week 2020, Day 1: Stargazing. Armin has never put much stock in wishes, but Jean has always been good at pushing him outside his comfort zone.)
Relationships: Armin Arlert/Jean Kirstein
Comments: 9
Kudos: 40





	A Bright Nowhere

**Author's Note:**

> written for jearmin week 2020, and in the same vein as my previous jean/armin fic, 'Red Sky' (from april 2018...) in which armin wants, and doesn't dare hope that jean might want him too. please enjoy!

“This must be the third time this week you’ve snuck out after dinner. Where are you off to, exactly?”

Armin jumped a good few inches. The mess hall wasn’t empty—people always lingered, even as lights-out loomed—but he hadn’t noticed himself being noticed. He knew the voice instantly but the sight of Jean, straddling a bench so as to face him, still came as a surprise. 

Jean’s tone was brisk but cheerful. It would have sounded accusatory coming from so many others. Hanji was more than civil to him, of course. Often kind, understanding, sympathetic even, but Armin cringed to imagine them asking the same question. The explanation was innocent enough, but to admit this indulgence to the higher-ups would have been embarrassing. Frankly, it would have been painful.

At Jean’s question, though, Armin did not bristle or flinch. Once the shock of it had faded, he was actually rather pleased.

“Stargazing,” he said. “It’s the perfect time of year, and this week has been especially clear. You could navigate by the stars on nights like this.”

Jean nodded, eyebrows lifting. He was darning something, Armin saw now, an old cotton shirt maybe, but his eyes were on Armin. And Armin, meanwhile, was distracted by the fluid motion of his hands, the needle itself like a slip of silver thread between his long fingers. The sight of it filled him with an unbearable tenderness that he couldn’t quite understand. Perhaps it reminded him of his mother, some memory beyond his conscious recall. Or maybe it was knowing that Jean could easily afford a new shirt, and yet he took the time to repair this old one. Not just a matter of thrift, but fondness for something familiar. 

“I don’t think I’ve had the chance to look up at the sky in months,” Jean said, laughing as—god—he tied off the thread and nipped the end with his teeth. He made everything look so easy. “I remember watching shooting stars with my Pa when I was a kid.”

Armin smiled. “Did you ever make a wish?” he asked, charmed by the image of a young Jean, his head craned upwards, face flooded with awe. What child didn’t find the night sky magical?

“You know, I probably did. Something ridiculous, like… to be rich and live in the centre, most likely.” Jean scratched his chin, the scruff rasping against his calloused fingers. “Fat lot of good that wish did!”

He grinned a self-deprecating grin and began to fold up his project, the needle and thread disappearing into a battered cigarette tin. Armin thought the conversation finished, but as Jean stood he spoke again, this time almost hesitant.

“Hey, Armin. would you mind much if I joined you?” And then, quickly, “It’s okay if you do mind. I mean, I get it. If you want to be alone, that is.”

For the second time, Armin was so surprised that he didn’t speak for a few moments. In those moments, he saw Jean’s expression shift from uncertain to something like sheer panic, and Armin rushed to speak before Jean could take the offer back.

“Of course,” he said. “I’d like that.” Colour came into his cheeks, and to fight it down Armin joked, “As long as you’re not expecting any shooting stars.”

Jean brightened visibly. “Oh, great!” He tucked the tin into his pocket, the shirt folded under his arm. “I’ll see you out there in ten?”

“Yeah. I’ll grab a light so you can see me.”

“I’ll find you,” Jean said. He gave Armin a thumbs-up and said nothing more as he walked away. Forget the thumbs-up, though; it was the sideways smile on Jean’s face that thrilled Armin, as if they were sharing a secret. 

He tried not to skip out of the mess hall.

The night was clear, bright with a riot of stars. The moon, a slice of white-yellow, like a fingernail piercing the fabric of the sky. Velvet dark. There was a bare breeze that lifted the fragrance from a tree of lilacs nearby. They were headier now they were dying, its branches bowed with clusters of browning white flowers. The wind scattered their dry petals on to Armin’s shirt.

Lying in the leaf litter, the grass cool and damp in that midnight way, grounded him. The sweetness of the night air filled his lungs. The sky, even as it shifted, was the same. Armin had memorised as many constellations as he could when he was eight years old, and even now he could trace the shape of them into the air above his head. Warriors, lovers, animals, wagons and kitchen pans and castles were writ among these stars. 

It was difficult to concentrate, though, and not just because of the obnoxious light given out from his lantern. Tonight, Armin was not just watching but waiting. A nauseous excitement had settled in his stomach, not unlike the kind he used to get before a written exam. That strange blend of confidence and uncertainty, knowing yet not knowing. After all, Jean had been the one to ask to join him; Jean had accosted him in the mess hall. Jean had noticed his nightly trips—three times!

His excitement was childish, Armin was well-aware. But if he were being honest, he ached for Jean. Even alone, the admission made him swallow and his face grow hot. Yes, _that_ : the guilty, wonderful thrill of wanting Jean unashamedly, nursing a ball of white heat in his gut. Jean was good-looking, certainly, and Armin’s nascent attraction had become very difficult to ignore over the past year. He used to be very good at it; so good, in fact, that Armin had not known it was attraction at all. You can only keep your hand cupped over a candle for so long, however, before it begins to burn. He knew nothing would ever happen. Armin had made peace with the fantasy, an indulgence not unlike his stargazing, which he would worry at for the sore pleasure of it. 

Armin was jarred from his thoughts by the sound of footsteps. He sat up to see Jean’s silhouetted shape emerging from the dark, and despite the light Armin still waved madly at him. It prompted Jean into a jog, and soon he was standing at Armin's side.

“Hey,” he said. Jean was wearing a jacket, his shoulders shrugged up to his neck. He cocked an eyebrow as he took Armin in. “It’s chillier than I expected. You warm enough like that?”

Armin looked up at him, and then at himself. He hadn’t bothered to change out of his shirt, and his sleeves were still folded up to his elbows. No boots, no socks. His bare ankles peeked out beneath his trousers and above his leather slip-ons. He hadn’t even noticed the cold.

“Oh, I’m fine. But if you want to go back inside –”

Jean did not let him finish his sentence. He dropped down to sit beside him, laughing. “You’ve got crap all over your back.”

“It’s from the lilacs,” he began, but as he craned to look over his shoulder, Jean leant close. Armin went quiet as Jean brushed the back of his shirt clean. Gently, deliberately, he picked a deadhead from Armin’s shoulder. 

“You do this often, yet you never think to bring something to lie on?” Jean asked, a smile in his voice, and it was then that Armin noticed the bag slung over his shoulder. Jean turned to it, pulling out a folded blanket. The bag clanked as he did so.

Armin huffed, half in disbelief, half in amusement. “What else do you have in there?”

“Oh, a few things…” Jean stood up, grabbing two corners of the blanket and throwing it open. He lay it flat on the ground, eyes turned upward as though trying to remember a laundry list. “You know, provisions.”

“Mess wasn’t even two hours ago.”

Jean was undeterred. “Liquid provisions!”

Armin shook his head, but he couldn’t stop himself from smiling. He repositioned himself on the sheet, brushing off the back of his legs before he did so. Jean stayed crouched by the bag. Once Armin was settled, he produced two bottles with unnecessary panache, and raised an eyebrow.

“A beer, sir?”

Armin reached for it, Jean beaming. His grin showed his eyeteeth. “Well, it’d be rude to refuse after you made the effort to steal it from the kitchen.”

“Steal is a bit harsh,” Jean said, lowering himself next to Armin. He pulled out a pocketknife and popped the cap from his beer. He gestured for Armin’s bottle and did the same again, twisting the cap free as Armin held it out to him. “I think we deserve a drink, don’t you?”

Armin did not reply, but he took an answering sip. It was cold, bitter, the bottle sweating and slippery in his hand. He still preferred cider, though honestly his favourite drink was the lousy wine they were granted on weekends, of which there were always endless jugs available. It tasted less like alcohol and more like fruit water, which made sense—Armin was pretty sure it was the same stuff they were served when they were fifteen-year-old trainees.

Jean clunked the neck of his bottle against Armin’s. “Cheers, I guess,” he said, and drank deeply. It was quiet enough that Armin could hear him swallow, his teeth against the glass, a satisfied exhale. Jean lay back, holding the bottle upright on his stomach. He was silent for a moment, and then spoke with obvious awe: “Wow. I can’t remember the last time I saw so many stars.”

Armin felt something warm settle in his chest. He knew, of course—he’d been watching this same sky for long enough—but still he lifted his gaze upwards, the glory of it filling him, charging him. It was so clear that the stars and the moon let out a ghostly brightness. He could remember snowy days like this, up in the mountains, where even at night the light could bounce off the strange pale landscape and make you feel like you were trapped within a cocoon. 

“It’s nice, isn’t it,” Armin said, tentatively, the enormity of it beyond his description. He felt very raw, as though Jean was looking at something he had made rather than the night sky. “And pretty much no one comes out here. Or they’ve never bothered me, anyway.”

Armin turned out the lantern and sank back, wedging his beer into a tuft of grass until it felt stable enough to stand on its own. He was closer to Jean than he realised, their shoulders nearly touching, but there wasn’t space on the blanket to move away.

“Jeez, you _are_ warm,” Jean said. His shoulder nudged Armin’s more deliberately. The brush of Jean’s knuckles against the back of his hand shot electricity through him. “No wonder you don’t need a jacket.”

Armin swallowed hard. His fingers twitched, either with the urge to reach out or to pull away. Surely Jean could hear him, his drying throat, the roar of his breathing. Armin felt fleshy, graceless, so obvious in his desire that it choked him with shame. 

His scrambled brain threw up some useless thought and Armin leapt on it. “Yeah,” he said, dumbly. “Yeah, I think it’s because of the Colossus’ power, or something. I mean, I used to need layers all the time, but now…”

He stretched upwards to illustrate his point, his bare forearms, the sleeves of his shirt folded down to the joint. Though now he had the problem of putting them back down again, and when they had been touching, barely, with just enough plausible deniability that Armin could tell himself that Jean hadn’t noticed. 

He held them in the air for a second too long before folding them over his stomach. And elbowing Jean as he did so.

There was an _oof_ , a surprised sound more than a pained one, and then a chuckle. “Watch it!” Jean said, and jabbed Armin hard in the tender part of his waist, making him squawk. “You could do serious damage with those bony elbows.”

Armin rubbed at his side, awkwardness forgotten. “As if yours are any better.” He lay his arm back down, bare skin against the fabric of Jean’s jacket. Good thing, too—Jean couldn’t feel his skin prickling with goosebumps which had nothing at all to do with the cold. Armin adopted a sombre tone. “Joints are naturally bony. I can’t do anything about that.”

Jean laughed again. “True, true.” Then, suddenly, his head shot up. His other hand, still balancing the beer on his stomach, jerked and splashed beer on his lap. “Oh, crap—hey, did you see that?”

Armin scanned the sky. “No, I…” _I was looking at you._ “What was it?”

“You missed it?” Jean said, sitting up on his elbows. He sighed, disappointment apparent in his voice. “It was a shooting star.”

“Really? I’m glad you got to see one.” Armin glanced at Jean’s face and noticed, with some amusement, that he was frowning. In fact, almost _pouting_. “It’s alright, they’re not too rare, you know. But since you saw it, did you make a wish?”

“Hah! You serious? I didn’t even think about it, honestly.”

Armin sat up, bumping his shoulder. “You can still make one, if you want,” he teased. “Riches could still be in your future. Though maybe not a cushy job in central anymore.”

“I wouldn’t waste a wish on that anyway,” Jean said, more seriously than Armin was expecting. He sat up in a funny little crouch, knees against his chest. He stared at his half empty beer, twisting it back and forth. “What would you wish for?”

Armin paused. He had never made wishes on shooting stars, not even when he was a child and his grandfather first taught him to. He had thought it a pointless thing even then, a peculiar reach for comfort in a coincidence. Stars shot across the sky pretty frequently if you watched for long enough. They were not magic; they had no special power, no more so than the sun or the moon that appeared so often. Still, looking into Jean’s face, Armin felt the pressure of expectation. What was important enough to ask the cosmos for?

An answer wasn’t coming quick enough. Armin grasped for an excuse. “Don’t they say it won’t come true if you say it out loud?”

“Only if you actually made the wish. And you didn’t even see the star, so you’re in the clear,” Jean said, taking pride in his simple logic. “Go on, I went and told you about _my_ childhood wish, I definitely won’t be rolling in gold now.”

Armin hummed, scratched his nose. He took a long drink to give him some time, or perhaps inspiration, though he had never found alcohol especially inspiring. “I don’t know… no titans, I suppose.” 

“No! Too easy,” Jean said, “it’s not realistic.”

Armin scoffed. “What, realistic? As if wishes are in the first place.”

“I don’t wanna hear it,” Jean shot back, shaking his head. “Come on, don’t worry about the big stuff. Anyone would—should—wish for, I dunno, peace among men. But what do _you_ want? It’s your wish, not a wish for all humanity.”

Why did that make it so much harder?

“These wish rules are becoming more elaborate,” Armin grumbled. Still, he sank back into thought.

Armin had plenty of wants, though he rarely bothered dwelling on them. He wanted his parents, sometimes, or at least his grandfather, but he had long made peace with that. He wanted Eren to be … well, that was especially complicated. He wanted Mikasa to be happy. Hell, he wanted a softer bed and a half-decent growth spurt, thank you very much. 

If he were being honest, sometimes he wanted Jean so intensely it scared him. It blindsided him. he could be reading, eating, sleeping; Jean’s face would float into his mind. His dreams were mostly nonsense these days, but Jean’s presence in them was more common than not. Armin dreamt of his mute horror as he looked down the barrel of a gun. His twisted grief after losing one of his squad members in a training accident—a sixteen-year-old girl with a whip-crack grin who could pivot on a sixpence—or his drunken glee when let loose in Trost’s entertainment district on his birthday last year. But mostly it was more subtle than that, waking the morning after with some sense of Jean’s soul even as the dream slipped away into nothingness.

Admitting that here, out loud, was of course impossible. Armin closed his eyes, breathed in. When he opened them, he fixed his gaze on the ground.

“I guess I would wish that I didn’t have the Colossus’ power.”

There was a pregnant pause. He wondered what Jean’s face looked like, but Armin did not dare look at him. His heart thumped a rapid rhythm in his chest. 

Jean’s voice, when it came, was harsh. “You might as well wish you were dead.”

It stung in a satisfactory way. Armin had expected it. Hell, he deserved it. Sometimes he did wish just that: to have died on the roof that day. It would have been tidy, dying with the pointless glory of sacrifice. He wouldn’t have had to learn about the reality of their miserable existence as Eldians. He wouldn’t have to face a seven-year death sentence. There would have been sadness, yes, and Armin could hardly bear thinking about Mikasa and Eren, but he would have been dead. It was the ultimate selfishness. _None of this is_ my _problem anymore._

Armin shook his head as he spoke. “That’s… I just wish the whole thing hadn’t happened. That I was just me. And if that meant the Commander, that Erwin was alive, then all the better.”

It was a lousy reply, and Armin knew that Jean was canny enough to see straight to the heart of what he was saying. But he also knew that Jean would not broach this fragile topic, one that they hardly spoke of since Floch accosted him in court some three years ago. There wasn’t the time to indulge in these emotions anymore, and even Armin was sick of his own misery. There were still things worth living for. Worth fighting for.

Jean let out a noisy sigh, one that rose to a groan at the end. “That’s bullshit,” he said, clearly upset and yet unwilling to break the uneasy peace. Armin was secretly grateful: it was a conversation that required more than one beer. Jean went on, “Fine. And anyway, you can’t wish for that now since you told me.”

Armin stared at him. “What? But the whole point was that I didn’t—”

“Sorry,” Jean said, “I mean, now that I think about it. Since I know that would be your wish, if you ever do make a wish, I’ll already know what it is by default, and then it won’t come true. So you need a new one, obviously. And you can keep the new one a secret.”

Jean was fixedly not looking at him, speaking a little too quickly. His nose and ears were ruddy with the cold, but there was some colour high in his cheeks, too, and Armin became aware again of how close they were, closer than before. Leaning into each other, the button of Jean’s cuff pressing into his wrist. Armin didn’t dare move.

He felt, as before, very raw. Tenderness, a great wave of it, washed over him. For Jean, his simple friendship. For the blanket, and the horrible beer he had hardly drunk. His eyes ached.

“… I can’t argue with your wish logic,” Armin ceded, perhaps a little too quietly. It was difficult to swallow, suddenly, and he took another drink to force down the lump in his throat. Both of them fell silent, the air heavy with words they could not speak.

Finally Jean turned to look at him. There was something in his face, something beyond the easy grin he offered. “It’s pretty flawless, huh. Plus I’ve generously given you the chance to come up with a much better one, so don’t waste it.”

The timing was perfect, or maybe painful: Armin was thinking of how to reply when he saw it. There, just above Jean’s ear, a blink of white light as the star scored its way across the sky. A silver needle. 

“Look, there’s another one.”

Jean whipped his head around, speaking excitedly. “Over there? I see its tail!” He turned again to look at Armin. “You better make that wish…”

Armin did not look back at him. He could not. He closed his eyes, and there he saw Jean’s handsome, angular face, so clear he could trace its shape among the stars. He saw the warmth with which Jean looked at his horse, how he spoke to her, the unbearable gentleness as he scratched her ears and stroked her flank. The way his shoulders flexed under his shirt when he stretched, sparred, cooked, cleaned. The blade of his razor flashing as he slid it across the leather strop; and the considered way Jean angled it against his face as he shaved away a day’s fresh growth. 

Armin opened his eyes. The stars above him did nothing. The air stirred. He could smell lilacs, and his skin prickled with a warmth that wasn’t his own.

“I did,” he said. “And you definitely won’t get it out of me this time.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading. the title comes from seamus heaney's poem, ['clearances'](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57042/clearances), and while frankly there is no connection between it and the fic, you should still give it a read. heaney has the most beautiful and poignant way with words; one can't help but want to borrow some.


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